The Lord of Opium

10

NURSE FIONA

Matt didn’t go to the opium factory. Eusebio’s reaction to the music bothered him too much, and he told Daft Donald to drive to the hospital. He had no good memories of the place and didn’t want to go there now, but he had to learn more about the microchipping process.

The hospital was set apart from other buildings. It was a gray, windowless place surrounded by a wasteland of sand and thorny vines. Dust had drifted over its front steps as though no one had gone inside for a long time. But the door wasn’t locked. The smell in the waiting room was sickly sweet and medicinal at the same time, and it stirred terrible images from Matt’s past. For the first time in weeks he felt his lungs close up. Bad air! his mind screamed as he reached for his asthma inhaler. He staggered outside and collapsed on the dusty steps.

Daft Donald, who had been waiting in the car, rushed over. “Find help,” Matt managed to gasp. The bodyguard nodded and ran inside.

It took Daft Donald a few minutes to return, and by that time Matt felt slightly better. A woman in a nurse’s uniform knelt beside him. “Dear me, young master. You want to be lying down.” She had the same lilting accent as Tam Lin.

“Not in the hospital,” said Matt.

“No indeed! It’s like a bloody crypt in there,” the nurse said. She and Daft Donald carried the boy to the car, although Matt said he felt well enough to walk. “I’ll see you back to your own good bed, laddie. It’ll be a fair treat getting out of that hospital, I can tell you,” the nurse confided. “All the doctors gone, only the odd gardener coming in with a cut, the halls deserted except for those bloody zombies. Scrub, scrub, scrub, that’s all they ever do. It’s a wonder the floor hasn’t eroded.”

By the time they arrived back at the hacienda, Matt had learned a lot about the nurse, whose name was Fiona. He knew where she’d gone to school, her first and second husbands’ names, her father’s occupation (punter, whatever that was), her mother’s problems with varicose veins. On and on the one-sided conversation flowed until Matt was quite bewildered.

“You’re the first Real Person I’ve seen in donkey’s years,” Fiona warbled, tucking Matt into bed. “ ‘Look after the hospital,’ they said, going off to that party they threw for the old man’s funeral. The doctors, the head nurses, the lab technicians left me behind because I’m at the bottom of the heap. No vacations for Fiona. She’s only a dishwasher. ‘We’ll be right back,’ they said. And didn’t they drink poisoned wine at that party! It just shows that good luck has a way of turning on you. Foo! There’s a fair pong in this room. Would you mind if I opened a window?”

By now Celia had been alerted as to Matt’s illness. She bustled in with home remedies and a tray of food. Between them, the two women set up a bed table and soon had Matt propped against pillows.

“Where’s Waitress?” Matt asked.

“Don’t you remember? You sent her to be retrained,” Celia said.

A whisper of alarm touched Matt’s nerves. “She’ll be back, won’t she?”

“Of course. Eventually.” Celia left.

“Here comes the choo-choo train going to the station,” Fiona said brightly. She held up a spoonful of mashed potatoes.

“I can feed myself!” said Matt, shoving her hand away.

“El Patrón used to like this game,” the nurse said. “I’d say, ‘Here comes the choo-choo train,’ and he’d say, ‘What’s it carrying, Nurse Fiona?’ And I’d reply, ‘All sorts of delicious treats,’ and he’d say—”

“Shut up!” said Matt. And then was sorry because he knew why Fiona was talking so feverishly. She’d been alone too long. “Look, I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I’m just not interested in games. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“All right,” said Fiona.

So Matt asked about the chipping process, and it turned out that she knew quite a lot, though she wasn’t allowed to do it herself. “They put a drip into the patient’s arm,” she said, “and then they inject the chips with the liquid. The chips are smaller than blood cells and go right through the heart. Sometimes they get filtered out by the liver, but most of them make it. I’ve seen them under the microscope. They look like tiny diamonds. One side has a protein that attaches to a brain cell. The other is a mosaic of different kinds of metal and is slightly magnetic.”

“Magnetic,” repeated Matt. That was interesting.

“I’ve been told that they’re tiny batteries. They work together like a second brain, only much simpler than ours. The process takes less than fifteen minutes, and when it’s done the patient—though you could hardly call him a patient, more like a victim I’d say, only don’t quote me—is catatonic.”

“What’s ‘catatonic’?”

“It’s like a coma. All the brain functions are on hold, so to speak. The doctor marks the forehead with the number 666 to show the operation’s been done. Then the orderlies take the patient away to be trained.”

“Who does that?”

“The Farm Patrol.” For once, Fiona didn’t look chirpy. “I hear it’s brutal and that they enjoy doing it.”

Brutal! And Matt had sent Waitress to be retrained! He pushed the bed table away.

“Lie down, young master! You’ll undo my good work if you don’t rest,” protested the nurse.

“I can’t stay. I’ve got to rescue Waitress.” Matt stood up and steadied himself as a slight dizziness struck him.

“If she’s an eejit, it won’t matter,” Fiona said. “They don’t feel anything. The doctors say they react to stimuli the same way a dead frog jerks if you give it an electric shock. Mind you, I never liked that part of biology, the poor froggies looking like little old men in green pajamas—”

“Shut up!” cried Matt again. He went straight to the kitchen, where, as he had expected, Daft Donald was having lunch. “Get the car,” the boy commanded. “Take me to where the eejits get trained.”

They sped through the opium fields with a long plume of dust rising behind them. Matt wished Daft Donald could talk, because he suspected the man knew a lot about the training. It was too late now. The man couldn’t drive and write notes at the same time.

They arrived at the armory, and a group of men sitting outside jumped to attention. “Where—” Matt began. Daft Donald took his arm and pulled him through the courtyards surrounding the armory and on to another building behind it.

Matt heard a scream. He shook off Daft Donald and raced ahead. “Step aside!” he shouted at a pair of Farm Patrolmen, and such was the authority in his voice that the men practically fell over getting out of his way. Inside the building, Matt saw a windowless room with a drain in the middle of the floor. At the far end was Waitress, bound to a chair with her hands taped around electrodes, and Cienfuegos in front of a machine. Such was his concentration that he didn’t hear Matt enter.

“Your name is Mirasol,” the jefe said.

“No! No! I am Waitress!” sobbed the girl.

Cienfuegos shook his head and turned a dial. The girl’s body jerked.

“Take him, Daft Donald,” Matt ordered. The bodyguard lunged past and smashed his head into Cienfuegos’s lower back. Matt yanked out the wire leading into the machine. But when he turned, he saw that the jefe had recovered from the blow and had cut a slash across Daft Donald’s face.

“Stop, Cienfuegos!” shouted the boy. “Obey me!”

The jefe aimed another swipe at the bodyguard’s face, but Daft Donald was no amateur at this kind of fighting. He produced his own knife from a scabbard on his leg. With this he blocked the jefe’s arm and inflicted a vicious cut.

“Stop! Both of you!” Matt thrust himself between them, and Daft Donald backed away. Cienfuegos, however, was beyond reason. He raised his stiletto, and his eyes were completely blank. For a frozen instant nothing happened. Then Matt said, “I am the cat with nine lives. You will not prevail against me.”

Where had those words come from? They weren’t like anything Matt would say.

“El Patrón,” whispered Cienfuegos. He dropped the stiletto and doubled up, clutching his stomach. If the cries of Waitress had been bad, the screams coming from the jefe were even worse. He sounded like he was enveloped in flames. Daft Donald caught him and mouthed words at Matt. “What do you want? What should I do?” the boy said.

Daft Donald mouthed again, Forgive him. Could he possibly mean that? Why would the bodyguard care what happened to Cienfuegos? Forgive him, Daft Donald said again. The jefe’s screams were growing weaker.

“I forgive you,” Matt said. Cienfuegos shuddered and relaxed into Daft Donald’s arms. Blood dripped from his wound. The microchip, Matt thought. He’s under the control of the microchip. When he attacked me, it was programmed to kill him. But El Patrón added a fail-safe to stop the process.

“Get one of the men to drive,” Matt told the bodyguard. “You and Cienfuegos must go to the hospital. Waitress, too.” He knelt down beside her and began to unwind the tape holding the electrodes to her hands. “I never meant this to happen, Mirasol, and it will never happen again,” he said.

“I am called Waitress,” she responded.